WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that is considered as the most popular blogging platform. Aside from that, WordPress is also popular for its simple 5-minute installation process. Most web hosts offer tools like Softaculous that can install WordPress automatically on your server. However, if your server does not offer such a service, or if you simply enjoy some manual labor, the following guide can help you.

Requirements

Before anything else, there are certain things that you should make sure prior to installing WordPress.

You must have SFTP access to the server (FTP access also works, but requires a workaround)

Pre-installation Steps

Upload the .zip file downloaded in the previous step to your server public_html directory. DO NOT unzip the file locally and upload it through FTP since the FTP protocol will upload each file individually, increasing the chance for some of them to become corrupt or missing.

Extract the .zip file that has been previously uploaded to your server. This step requires SFTP access. If you only have FTP access, then you might be able to unzip the package through an online file manager in your cPanel. If you don’t have a file manager (or a cPanel) then your only option is to upload a PHP script to manually unzip it (see our tutorial on how to upload multiple files using FTP & PHP)

Create a MySQL Database intended for WordPress Use. During the installation process, WordPress will ask you for the name of the database that you have created in this step.

Create a database user and give it full access to the database. During the installation process, WordPress will ask you for the user name and password, so you will need to remember them.

The Installation Process

After completing the above steps, you are ready to begin the installation process:

Navigate to your domain (e.g. http://example.com) in your browser to run the WordPress installation script. The first screen will ask you to choose a language for you WordPress installation:

After selecting your language, a pre-installation screen will be shown, verifying that you have all that is needed to proceed with the installation. Simply click on ‘Let’s go!’ to proceed.

The next screen is where you provide all the information that you have gathered in the first part of this tutorial – the database name, the database username + password and the database host (usually localhost). It also asks you to choose a table prefix in case you run multiple WordPress installation on a single database (if not, which is usually the case, just leave it as wp_)

After clicking on “Submit”, WordPress will check to make sure that it is able to connect to the database (which it should, provided that all the information you gave in the previous screen was correct). If a successful connection has been established, you will see the following screen.

Click on “Run the install”. This will take you to the final installation screen, where you can choose your site title, username, password and email. You will use the username & password created in this screen to log into you WordPress installation.

After completing the installation process, WordPress will show you a success message and a link where you can login with your newly created user. Click on the “Log in” button and provide your login credentials in the screen that follows.

That’s it! WordPress is now installed on your server and you can start blogging!

To login in the future, simply navigate to wp-login.php on your domain (i.e. http://mydomain/wp-login.php) and use the username & password that you have created previously.